Nietzsche And Schopenhauer on The Modern Stereotypes

Have you ever heard about the Doomer?

ps: I don't depict those labels as something towards ageism or any form of segregation. This is purely an analysis and opinion of modern memes that describe certain characteristics across generations.

ps2: This is in a western context.

If you are up to date with memes, you have probably seen some in videos with a character that is known as Doomer. Much probably you also heard some of his "friends" Boomer, Bloomer, and Zoomer.

Oh, you did not hear? Well, me too, until recently. Each one of those characters represents a specific stereotype within our modern society, which I guarantee you will recognize at least one of them in your circle. Maybe even you. Well, hopefully, you won't identify yourself as the Doomer. Here we will talk about the Doomer, and as they are somewhat relatable to him, also the Boomer and Bloomer.

The Doomer

The Doomer is a person around their 20's and is typically male. It is not gender-specific, but it looks like the unofficial majority of this stereotype is male. Despite being a stereotype that could comprehend all genders around their 20's, the Doomer has a hallmark that relates to its name. The Doomer is someone who is aimlessness, and sees life as ultimately meaningless, filling him or her with powerful, apathetic despair.

The Doomer sees humanity as… well, doomed. In his view, society is frivolous, superficial, pleasure-seeking, unconscious of its self-perpetual animality. This radical and negative world view makes The Doomer with no reason to pursue nothing that society gives value, making him isolated and alone.

The meme usually comes along to satirize several modern-life situations as someone who works in a terrible job, who got dumped by someone, or who drinks and smokes as a means to forget himself, which only makes this character even more alienated from friends and family.

The character is quite relatable as it depicts how profound is the nihilism and pessimism of the young adult generation, mirroring and being experienced as hopelessness for both the present and future. Despite the negative features, the relatability also links to the stereotype's popularity as a form of ironic humor.

On a "happier" side, there is one of the major counterpoints of the Doomer: the Boomer.

The Boomer.

As you probably correctly guessed, the name Boomer comes from 'Baby Boomer': the individuals born between 1946 and somewhere around 1965. Despite the chronological relation, a philosophical approach towards this character makes it anachronical: The age and generation of a boomer do not necessarily matter for him or her to show some of the key stereotypical characteristics. You may see some of the hallmarks in younger generations.

The Boomer possesses a sometimes surreal positivity towards life, with a present 'can-do' attitude. This type of positivity is openly depicted in Boomer memes as naive and somewhat stupid. After all, from the Boomer's eyes, with so much desperation and suffering in life, how can one be so positive and optimistic? It is impossible. Therefore, the person must be naive or stupid. To live in such blissful ignorance is a delusion.

The Comparison

Differently from the Boomer, the Doomer was born around the 90s and grew up inside a technological era. The Doomer was present on the advent of the Internet and on technology developments at an absurd speed. This technological, informational era shaped the Doomer in impossible ways to the Boomers.

Whereas the Boomers only had access to specific and limited information, usually from their country, The Doomers, being the internet generation, were raised with a forever increasing flow of information and landscape change. The Boomers, being able to see and hear and interact with far-out places as Asia, the world became smaller.

Well educated, with Newtonian mechanics and Darwinism imbued in teenager curricula, seeing so much chaos and suffering in such a small world just affirmed to them how meaningless everything was. This information access only made sure to the Doomers that the Boomers, holding to some Christianity and with less information access, were outdated.

Being squeezed from one side by an ignorant generation and from another side the spiritual disruption brought by the technological era, an ultimate melancholy was an inevitable fate to the Doomers.

A Philosophical Approach

When we talk about Nihilism and Pessismim, it is useful to remember the work of the 19th-century philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Arthur Schopenhauer is broadly remembered for his pessimistic philosophy. Somehow and anachronically, we could say Schopenhauer is the original Doomer: he saw that life is quite absurd, with so much suffering, unavoidable pain, with a forever killing of beings by other beings, so some of them could survive.

Schopenhauer saw our self-perpetual instincts as irrational. A delusion where we try to impress sexual partners and find constructed narratives to keep on going into mundane subjects.

In such light, we realize that Schopenhauer's perspective is not far from Doomer's perspective: both of them agree when saying that life is suffering and that we have fundamental meaninglessness spread in every corner.

Nonetheless, Schopenhauer gives two small antidotes to a life of despair: Asceticism and Art.

Asceticism is the constricted life, where the individual disciplines himself to avoid pleasure, therefore, inhibit his instincts of desire. The ego becomes limited, so the pursuit of selfish objectives as money and social status are not important anymore. In a Buddhist approach, Schopenhauer affirmed that with no desire, there is happiness.

Additionally, for Schopenhauer, the engagement in Art and Philosophy could make one transcend himself, going beyond worldly nihilism. Art, painting, poetry, writing are all possible solutions to lift the individual from his mundane sorrows to a more sublime sphere. As a means of expression, Art could give meaning to pain, and we would feel freer from the shackles of our individual prisons.

A bit paradoxically, the Doomer approaches this view by doing a meta-analysis of himself: He created the Doomer meme as a means of humor, and now he can laugh unpreoccupied of himself.

Nietzsche and The Bloomer

Friedrich Nietzsche is also famous bi his take on nihilism. However, Nitzsche can also be interpreted within a heroic perspective: In a meaningless life, in a life with no values, one must, heroically, create his own values, and in this way, transpose him or herself from the lifeless herd.

For Nietzsche, the realization that life is meaningless permits the individual to look inside themselves and create their own meaning and self-identity. This is where the Bloomer comes.

The Bloomer is a stereotype that, as The Doomer, also sees the meaninglessness and pin throughout the world but consciously reacts in a different manner.

The Bloomer gets next to Niezstche by inviting suffering in and recognizing it as an opportunity to develop wisdom and resilience. He or she creates from his core the values that are necessary to endure life. Seeing melancholy as an intrinsic emotion in life, he sees it as it is: an emotion, so the Bloomer smiles when he can. On the contrary to the Boomer, that sees a positive reality, the Bloomer individual sees positive possibilities on negative realities.

The Takeaway

The modern internet stereotypes are an important means of self-assessing, to see where one is and which measures could be taken. As one can see, there is always a philosophy behind the scenes, even if one knows nothing about it.

Realized by Bloomer, the greatest reason for life is found in self-realization and self-expression of one's unique truth. To give the world the positive values one has inside.

No one wants to be entirely ignorant or be delusional. Also, who in this world would like to keep seeing the world only in grey colors, waking up in melancholy sheets every day? To give value, to give meaning to the world, it is what it is: a heroic task, where you are the hero of your own life.

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